Real Legends: Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter.

Mobile posting.

After today i can say i saw herbie hancock play piano and wayne shorter on sax, dave holland on drums and brian blade on bass and know what live jazz should sound like. And until i found out about the concert i thought herbie was dead because he played with miles davis and miles died a long time ago. I can now also say i got into a screaming fight at the box office over herbie hancock tickets and it was worth every second of standing my ground because those last two tickets in stand by were my tickets that my friend reserved and noone elses.

And the at some point in the concert when i realised that each note i just heard was gone. That it had passed and i was not going to hear it again and it meant the music was ending one second sooner- i cried Just a little bit and was glad i was sitting on the floor and could snuggle onto my friends lap because i felt so stupid crying over the passing of something i heard and was just lost and he was so overwhelmed with the sounds too that i was sure he would understand.

Charlie parker was said to sit and play three notes over and over again for hours so he could play them perfect and when herbie played the same three notes over and over i realised maybe this was the first time in my life i heard a perfect note and it does exist.

And jazz is so beautiful and i remember harlem, the jazz clubs and joel and i walking in the snow at all hour in the morning after we heard the songs in the then smoky bars of new york with old black men in red leather jackets drinking whiskey and women in their hats looking like time had not passed and king and x was still alive. And i mourned the closing of smalls and the lennex lounge and thought of sitting on the chair billie holiday once sat, and louis armstrong played his cornet followed by miles blowing on the trumpet. And they were all there once and i was just starting to learn about who they were and what they made and how to listen. And i closed my eyes to hear the way they slipped in and out of each others instruments and remembered how i learnt to listen to that new music and drifted away one note at a time. Sparingly, under stated, and a word a jazz musician i once met told me and cannot remember. This was not hotel jazz, not the blue book jazz, not be bop, and no funk, not easily listening, not elevator, not not fusion, nor show and not the cacaphony of miles experimental sounds of the seventies.. I dont know if there is a name to describe it but it seems to me it was once new jazz as it seems sparce but maybe this is just jazz, unencumbened by hyphens or genres. It just is. Simple four men playing together making music in the way of a tradition.

And in the end we lined up to get their autographs because after the notes have played and they are gone i can still have their names on a piece of paper. And somehow my frien3 made them laugh because when i asked them to write my name and spelt it out. He said, such a simple name for such a complicated woman. And then i asked why is it then men all laugh at the same jokes. They laughed even harder. And so even legends makes fun of a women s complexity, i guess it means they are men after all just ones with great talent an ear for sounds and a work ethic that all great musicians must have.